Vampirella Namor: 2084
by DiedInMarseilles
Summary: Tyranny, in the form of the cross, is destroyed by love.
1. NEOROME

VAMPIRELLA / NAMOR:

2084

1. NEOROME

At the center of the city, every roof in Neorome supported a cross. They were tall, reaching skyward. But their light pointed to the streets below them like searchlights. None was brighter than the cross atop the Vatican III. It shone like an accusing sun, especially at night.

Cardinal Golding stepped into this light. Even as a son of god, the light stung his eyes. He raised one hand to shield his eyes. The other held the hand of a golden-haired boy of six. The light stung his eyes too, as he was dragged along, bewildered but complying.

The cardinal pressed his hand to the scanner at the front entrance. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sentry priest approach. His hand rested anxious on the butt of his rifle. The cardinal smiled and nodded at the priest pleasantly as the unlocking device announced his identity. The door clicked open. The priest nodded back. He looked down at the boy as both the cardinal and the boy disappeared inside. The priest smiled more broadly now.

The cardinal shepherded the boy into his room. It was a chamber feverishly covered from ceiling to floor: on the walls were portraits of the savior and of the saints; there were frescoed scenes from scripture; and there were relics of ever size on shelves and atop the carved dressers and wardrobes and armoires. The cardinal posed the boy on the fourpost bed, folding back the silk canopy to gain a better view of him. He stepped back. He raised his hand to his mouth in stunned admiration, the other hand fiddling with his robes. The boy simply sat, unmoved in his innocence.

The fiddling hand lifted the red folds above veiny knees and above fatfilled thighs. Visibly excited, the cardinal advanced toward the boy. The boy frowned. His did not blink. He shied his face away. But the cardinal was hardpressed that they meet. Then the boy's eyes narrowed, darkened. His hair fell over his forehead. His eyebrows arched. His downturned mouth opened wide, revealing teeth milky against the dark throat. The cardinal did not recognize the boy now. He tried to pull away. He found he could not stop himself.

He felt the warmth he expected. He felt the wet, too—but the wet poured. It dripped audible onto the floor and hotly on his legs. In his efforts to free himself, he did not at first feel the pain. It came. He inhaled to scream. A little hand reached up to stifle the sound. But the hand that gripped the mouth was feminine with longnailed fingers. The nails bit into his cheeks. There was more flowing. A darkhaired figure rose from the bed, stepping quickly behind the trembling cardinal. Twisting his head to the side, exposing his neck, Vampirella smiled. The split in her bangs was the bat's head, her eyesbrows its wings—but all else about her face was captivating, ageless beauty. Her fangs showed briefly, before they sunk out of sight into the cardinal's flesh. Streaks of flowing red, like his flowing robes, ran over the already drying red on her chin.

The cardinal flailed flaccid arms. They dropped impotently—an aborted attack. He sank to the floor.

When the neck was pale and stiff, Vampirella finally unwound her booted legs from the cardinal's hips. Her hands on his face and on his chest let go. The corpse fell over heavily. Vampirella sighed. She leaned back, her head going back as far as it could to make sure that every drop of food found its way down her throat.

The meal made her drowsy. She dozed. Time was incompressible to her. When the loud thud sounded in the corridor without the room, she could not say how much time had passed. She lifted her lugubrious head, narrowing her eyes. She remembered where she was, sobered by the sound. She remembered what she had come there to do. Silently, she crept to the door. There she waited with bated breath and listened. Hearing nothing more, she stood, creaking the door open. Through this she spied the corridor, still and silent. All seemed as it was, except for the downed priest, sprawled on the tiles without his weapon. She opened the door wider, gingerly taking a step forward.

The door slammed fully open. She leapt back several feet. She landed with her stocky heels firmly planted, her knees bent, her nails at the ready.

Standing framed in the doorway was Namor, the Submariner. He was attired like a priest. His black eyes looked fiercely at her, yet he did not move. Even with the priest's rife in his hands, he did not threaten or attack. His face was stony. His nose was like the prow of a battleship. His cheeks were taut, to the point of being skeletal. Without taking his gaze away, he broke the rifle into pieces, casting them aside. He ripped himself out of the uniform. He cast this aside too

Neither spoke. Neither felt the need to. They each read ally in the other's looks. They read coconspirator in each other's muscles. And each felt attraction to a likeness: pointed teeth for pointed ears; the same fareast eyes; the same hyperhuman forms unrobed; the sense of water at their beings' core, hydrogen for hemoglobin.

They shared their names. Then, more trustingly, they shared their missions. Then, in a friendlier fashion, they shared their motives. Then, more intimately, they shared their stories.


	2. THE KING OF THE DEEP

2. THE KING OF THE DEEP

I am a king, every inch of me is one—but I am no tyrant. Such a word, no matter the context, heats my blood, and if I allow it to truly get the best of me, my hands will close into fists. I was the ruler of my kingdom for my years—I did so sternly but justly. I know this to be the truth for no one, not even my harshest critic, and I had many in my long career, ever thought so low of me as to consider me a tyrant. I not only passively was not a tyrant, I actively pursued the destruction of tyranny wherever it reared its hideous head. I allied myself with heroes from the surface world, with whom I have waged war as well but never so heatedly as I waged it against tyranny, to see that the tyrant's days were numbered. I invaded his territory when he rose to power; and I defended the earth from the threats of those who would, if given the chance, become a ruling despot.

We accomplished great deeds, these other heroes and I, helping to usher in an age where tyranny could not take hold. Global democratization fortified countries against the cancerous spread of tyranny, until the tyrant dwindled to a breed all but extinct. With tyranny's disappearance, so too came the end of the traditional hero, the brave person performing those deeds ensuring freedom's longevity. Retirement, when before this would have been unheard of, became the reality for most. They were now at liberty to simply live, and over time, die naturally, the excitement of an earlier epoch living on only in their dreams. With peace and autonomy so widespread, no new heroes were born or trained or created to take the place of the old. Time moved on and away from the hero, now a relic.

I became equally superfluous, and by my own doing I must admit, for it was I, first seeing the spirit of the age manifesting amongst the airbreathers, who campaigned the must enthusiastically for the rise of the parliamentary counsel which would take the full responsibility of running the new autonomous country, where once there was a kingdom with a king. I, meanwhile, donned the new role of advisor, a job I held indefinitely due more to the counsel's generosity than from any need of my skill in that department.

At the time I still heard the word hero spoken, only now it was applied to a type most unlike the bold adventurer I formally was. The lawmakers were heroes now, as were the grandfatherly peacekeepers, those who crusaded, selflessly and legally, for others' rights, and the mothers and fathers who sacrificed and provided for their families.

My own boldness, my actions, and the man I retired from being was no longer in fashion. And while the urge to _do_ more lingered in the recesses of my imagination, I was willing, for once, to belong more to the past than the present. I felt relief when my shoulders were no longer the pillars bolstering responsibility. I was proud, too, patriotically, when the protective dome, the construction of which I presided over, was dismantled amidst boisterous celebration. And I was only too content to watch this from the silent background, sleeping the heavy sleep of the accomplished.

It was such sweet sleep that was disturbed by the christian avantgarde. They did not come to us as conquerors, thus our guard remained lowered. They even stated plainly that they came in peace. But, in fact, the christian peace being a different breed altogether, they came like scheming warriors all the same, wagging a war not of might but of ideas—they came to convert us. We had grown unaccommodated to war, but still we were not sheepish people. We laughed off their theological volleys. The Atlanteans superstitions were ancient, but forgotten. To interject the gods, or as they described them, god, again into the current Atlantean thinking was absurd beyond logic and not worthy of argument. No Atlantean, not even the most naïve, would consider the christian point. And although they left unshaken, still stoically determined to win us to their cause, we felt certain our mocking assured their finally bowing out.

Then, they returned.

They returned with firepower which we, in our sophisticated peace, could not possibly return with any deftness. We had neither the technology to rival the christian guns, nor did we have the bloodthirst to overpower our attackers. To fight was alien to us; to conquer, though, and not only Atlantis but the world, was everything to them, a decree handed down from their god on high—or so they believed.

In short, we were not ready for war's return, and thus we were slaughtered. I'm sorry—I cannot say "we," for I am talking still, breathing still. Although spiritually I might have expired with my people, some part of me lives on perversely. I should have died with them, died out with them, for they are no more. The men were murdered by the christians, without hope of taking captives. The women and children, meanwhile, were spared such mercy. They were buried alive, with the bodies of the men piling up over them—buried alive and left sceraming under the ground and under watch. The christians rested on the spot, praying like demons to their devil of a god, while last gasps bloomed in that garden of death they sowed.

I was forced to hear every sound, every last one, for I escaped. I was out of practice when the christians fell upon me in the sapling stage of the scrimmage. I had allowed myself to fall into old age. I believed no longer in myself but in the world—and for this reason I lost. They beat me, cut me, shot me—yet still I was able to flee, although I did not remove myself too far from my kingdom's bounds.

I remained somewhere where I could watch and wait. I would convalesce and bide my time until the appropriate opening presented itself and I would attack, I would avenge the devastation I was unfortunate enough to survive.

Such an opportunity never came—or if it did, I let it go by without taking it, so sore of heart I was. I was reduced to a watching _thing_, eyes and a brain to take in what they saw, but disconnected from anything resembling a heart that I did not feel anything—even for sometime later I was numbed.

Before the christians departed, long after my people's genocide, they planted upon the spot of that holocaust a tall golden cross to sanctify the land. I watched the last of them go, probably to destroy more life, but too heartbroken still to pursue them in the hunt I would have given had I been my former self in that former time of my heyday. I was alone now, and free to walk again the land of my ancestors. But now I could not bring myself to touch it even with my feet. It was the strangest land to me, not even of the earth in my mind. The old actions of the hero I once was kindled in me a spark, not yet a raging fire. I covered the course of the destruction in who knows how many days, trending so reluctantly on that hallowed graveyard. As necessity stoked the embers of my hero's heart, my actions grew bolder. Eventually I dug, not knowing what I would find. Did I dream I would heroically pull survivors out and back into life? Could Atlantis rise again with so much effort on my part? I dug, but I did not rescue—I unearthed. I found remains, gore, bones, pieces of beings and food for worms.

I resurfaced and found the world of a nightmare. It was not that I had been away from the surfaceworld too long, and could not properly remember its details. No, the minutia of that world, which was really one with my own world, I came to understand, was recalled the moment my head rose above the waves. But something vitally important about the world was wrong. Like looking into the face of a deceased loved one, who retains the wellknown eyes while lacking the loving soul behind them, I both knew this world and did not. Birdsong, distant and nearby, floated to my hearing. When I reached the closest continent, I found there more noises, from the ground animals on and under the earth and the climbing animals of the trees. But to call this life in the fullest sense was a sin which disgusted me—for absent from these sounds was the sound of humans. We may call it precious, those coos and growls heard where man is not, but we may not call it nature, not without nature's première children. Nature had been robbed of her love and her soul.

As I traveled, I found this soullessness rife. I found more golden crosses than I did people, and wretched whenever I did, knowing what preventable sadness took place there. There was a blaze inside me when the sickness wore off—the old but not forgotten wrath which I once knew and would know again.

The gold of their crosses made me see red, and I made a vow of revenge and holy rage against all those still threatened by god, and when god is involved _all_ are threatened!—against the combination of mindlessness and militancy called religion!—against the peace of priests, which is the peace of endless flames!—against believers, those who are the despisers of all things earthly!—and most of all against god, the king of tyrants!


	3. THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

3. THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

I was a princess of Draculon, tutored by my father the king, whose name was synonymous with fairness on the tongues of his subjects. He never acted on his own whims. It was always his people he turned to first, to ascertain their feelings on any given topic, before he would act, and when he acted it was always with their wellbeing in the fore of his thoughts.

From my girlhood I was groomed to be his successor, and would have made my father proud of my rule—had the chance to rule been mine. It never came, like autumn never came during that final year of my planet's existence. Summer blazed hotter than it ever had in recent or in farflung memory—blazed, and remained. The nights gave no relief. Our world still revolved, yet the weather failed to change—rather, the air grew constantly hotter.

All life suffered as a consequence of this disaster: vegetation browned; wildlife disappeared; our beaches expanded while our shores diminished. No one would have believed our red rivers of sustenance would vanish so—no one dreamed they were anything less than ever renewable. But waste away they did, before our horrified eyes—and civilization with it, for as blood was rationed and our bodies longed for the drink it was accustomed to quaff, our minds unwound. The tabooed ways of hunting for our meals seemed less repugnant, and the best of us, the most humane, lusted for the life of other beings greedily.

I labored in the aid of my lover, whose pessimism brought him to the brink of moral collapse. Hunting his dinner, in his sickminded state, was acceptable. I calmed him, though, and as we parted for the final time I was confident that I had helped him on the path to psychological recovery.

It was thus, alone and giddy, that I encountered, at a distance, two beings I would come to know as earthlings. They did not assume the same regal stature of a Draculone and so were not worthy of my highest esteem. I did not, however, think so little of them as to think of them as food, until one, made clumsy by the strange terrain he found before him, fell headfirst into the ladder he and his compatriot accessed to convey themselves from their transport to the ground and vice versa. Life, sweet red life, flowed from the glistening wound on his head for no other reason, I believed, than to sustain me. I struck, then, without thought. There was only thirst and the means of quieting that thirst—every movement was a reaction to animalistic survival. The injured first I drank dry in seconds, needing, not savoring, his blood. The second, who turned his weapon on me feebly, I drank from briefly, until imagination vividly projected the sight of my father, ailing, as all were during this draught, but moreso, for he no doubt was secreting his rations to others, others whom he deemed more worthy of food than himself. I saved the comatose second earthling, bringing him before the court.

Ever the selfless ruler, my father's thoughts were far from his own rumbling stomach. He ignored the sagely advice of his courtiers, concocting a way to use the earthling's ship as a means of obtaining a fresh and limitless supply of food. Whether or not he ever ate the meal I provided for him I cannot say, for immediately the court was buzzing with the plotting and scramble of obtaining our salvation. Our last course was to fly the earth vessel back to its planet of origin, utilizing the coordinates already existing in its computer backs. One was to travel across the cosmos and, with luck, bring food, life, and civilization back to Draculon.

Although no eye that I met upon my return was accusing in any discernable way, I couldn't help but think that they hid their judgments well and that all, for this was my own preoccupation, thought me selfish and crass for draining an entire human privately. Ashamed, I volunteered to pilot the ship that was to visit earth. If I had sinned, I would atone through the future feasts I would bring back. Besides, it was my duty as the princess of Draculon to serve my people to the utmost.

The final preparations for my departure were troubled by an unprecedented heat, so shockingly hot that we should have read the glaring portent in it, though, doubly plagued as we were with the heat and starvation, we only worked the harder to get my craft off the planet. The heat urged me on my way—but had I known what was to follow, it would have urged me to stay instead.

Soon after take off, Draculon was lost to sight, seen only through the strain of a highpowered viewing screen we added to the lacking alien technology. What the screen revealed turned out to be its final moments. Satyr was the first to explode, its golden vastness devouring my tiny red speck of a home. This set off Circe, who then doubled the yellow stain I saw expanded across my screen. I was not, though, so far removed that I did not register the rumbling aftershocks all over the ship. Nor was I so far removed that the cries of all my race did not break my heart, and living on—as you say, perversely—puzzled me into a depression.

Out of the allenthralling grips of one such depression I returned to consciousness only to find the stillness of space all around me. My ship suffered nothing from the annihilation of my planet and my people, save a temporary rattling—no traces of which were to be felt in its smooth operations. Everything was fine, yet nothing was right. Given this paradox, how easily I slipped again out of sanity and into a darkness blacker than my surroundings—a darkness found only within a sole survivor.

After my arrival on earth, a planet so unlike Draculon—for its cities were cheap and dirty and its nature violent and unaccommodating—my depression soon gave why to distain and anger for this realm and its inhabitants. Humans were mere vessels, and the end of their lives my cruel sport. With every vein I opened, guilt burned my stomach into a nausea that, if I could not quell it, I would leave unrecognized, throwing my attention fully into the next hunt.

I killed my share—the deathtoll grew. But the more I interacted with humans, the greater was their nobility seen. A trifle of kindness I paid a scientist plagued by a possessing demon paid off in a blood substitute he crafted for me with his dying energies. I no longer had to kill, and that fire of guilt I started and ran from caught up to me. I writhed in its flames for a time—but when I emerged, I emerged with a newfound respect and love for man.

I even loved a man. He was my confirmed enemy, vowing to rid his world of my costly feasts which left so many of his fellows dead. My conscience, though, did his work for him, and, eventually, having saved his life numerous times—not to mention having been saved by him just as many times—and after tracking and killing more monsters together than humans I murdered, we became partners in our work as well as partners of the heart.

Remarkable creatures though they are, humans possess such a dismal lifespan. My lover lived his life, meeting with old age followed by death, as I carried on, unchanged in my experience save for knowing the greatest joy of loving and having been loved.

At the time of my lover's death, the christians had begun assembling a force to combat the same evil I fought. We naturally joined our efforts, wonderfully aiding our mutual cause. With every battle won, our strategies evolved in efficiency and reward. We were ever better at ridding the earth of its demons. Perhaps, we were too good at what we did.

The christians finally amassed a power over their years of monster fighting—one they were loath to relinquish when there were no more monsters threatening man, these had either been eliminated or had survived to realize the folly of attacking man, and so, out of fear for their lives, lived peacefully under the church's radar.

This new world, free of monsters, was going to remain so, the christians declared. Naturally, they turned on me, sending my own previous partners to terminate me. I was able, however—knowing these warriors' strategies from having fought along side them, even having trained some of them—to elude them and the others the church sent to destroy me, living a quiet life in the shadows.

I was actually the least of their concerns. Their mission was the same as always, to rid the world of evil—it was their target they changed. They believed they would bring about lasting united peace through violence. They slaughtered all practitioners of other beliefs until there were no other believers left. They gathered and bullied and tortured all who did not fit the description of their arbitrary preference—until there was a oneworld christian state, where the pope was given free reign to crush out any life under his heel on a sanctioned whim.

Through stealth I have fought my way into this fortress, knowing, with certainty, that some blow struck against this tyrant, no matter how suicidal this a task remains, is the first step in rebuilding our world. I know, too—with, if not certainty, then sorrowfully—that alone I could never muster the strength or the cunning to take down this tyrant.

But now I am not alone—we are not alone! Having lost nearly all, we now, at last, have each other, and together we could—we could—together—


	4. THE MONSTER CHRIST

4. THE MONSTER CHRIST

There was no distance between them now. Their bodies practically met. Vampirella, gazing into Namor's face, brought her unbloodied hand up to his cheek. They looked into each others' eyes for a long minute. It was a look which startled loneliness.

There were distant, incoming thuds. Boots in large numbers were hitting tiles. They would soon be on top of them. Their eyes then shifted without moving. They saw each other, briefly, before seeing the mission come into focus again.

Namor struck his battle stance. He buoyed himself in the air on his heelwings, tiny white bird's wings. These Vampirella saw. She smiled. From the unbroken smoothness of her back, two black hairless wings sprouted. They stretched and fanned. They bore her higher into the air than Namor. He dwelt in her shadow. He cast a look back at her above his head. It was all admiration and envy. It was a look which wounded loneliness.

When there was no more marching there was firing. The priests' platoon arrived, discharging their guns into the walls. Vampirella and Namor were too fast for humans. They were too fast even for automatic weapons. The priests attacked with little hope. They defended their lives against a fury of nails that have known many throats. They defended their bodies fruitlessly against fists used to tunneling faces. They were left as dripping piles of rifles, collars and limbs.

Vampirella and Namor left many such piles as they fought through the christian fortress. They fought and won their way to the fortress's core—the pope's inner sanctum. It was a palace onto itself. It was not decorated but covered in golden relics. The walls could not be seen from it. It was a chamber where religious gold was hoarded.

The sanctum narrowed into a grand staircase. This lead to a golden cross twelve feet tall, gleaming brightly with reflected light. It supported a larger than life effigy of the christian savoir frozen in his deaththroes. Despite its agonized heavenward eyes, nothing in the sanctum escaped its vigil.

Before this was the golden throne of the cross's guardian. It was from this seat that the eldest son of god looked out onto the world. It was from this seat that he watched his brothers conquer it. And it was from this seat that the pope, Pius XIII, watched stoically the entrance of Vampirella and Namor.

No attempt to get at the pope could be made. The sanctum was soon overrun by a last defense. There was the redarmored members of the cardinal elite, men looking much thicker and sturdier than they were. And there was the bishop corps, under helmets of iron and reinforced glass. All entered from the sanctum's four corners, crowding.

Helmets and armor had won their wearers honors, and had secured power for the church. But helmets and armor meant nothing to Vampirella and Namor. Helmets cracked as easily as the skulls they housed. And red armor ran over with the blood it failed to protect.

Blood painted over the relics. Only the cross and the throne were untouched. The sanctum's light changed as a result. It was now something darker, something redder, something easier on the eyes.

Vampirella and Namor ceased their rampage. They turned now to the pope. The pope stood, a book opened in his hands. His eyes remained forward. His lips worked mutely. He descended toward Vampirella and Namor, over the dismembered bodies once his army. His voice grew to a screeching. His latin recitation was finally audible but incomprehensible. With a grin, he grew quiet, turning and pointing to the effigy.

The wooden muscles of the savoir creaked like a ship in a storm. Wideeyed in disbelief, Vampirella and Namor saw the thing move. It twitched in the limbs. It twisted its neck. It convulsed all over. With the veins perturbing from its straining arms, it freed itself from the cross, groaning and grunting. When it finally tore its tandem legs free, it landed atop the throne, smashing it. It was slumped, still groaning. The sound was animalistic. As if something else where alive within it, its body stretched, grew, worked out through exercise the wooden look of its exterior. Its proportions were grotesque by the time it raised its head. It looked with hatred at Vampirella and Namor. The pope laughed.

The pope stepped out of the way, the cue for the christ monster to descend. Its first heavy step flattened what remained of the throne. Its second shook the cross loose. It landed amidst the dead. The monster then made its sure way down the stairs, the stairs either splintering or bending under its weight.

It soon loomed over Vampirella and Namor. It dwarfed them like children. They held their limbs up and kept their eyes opened. Yet still they did not advance. They gave ground in fact. The monster came on. It flattened everything in its path. Bones and helmets and weapons and armored hearts were crushed loudly underfoot.

Namor heard something else as well. He heard a hissing. He looked down from the monster's face to its feet. There he saw small clouds of steam rise. It was not consistant, though. He watched the next few steps. There was only steam when the monster came into contact with human blood.

Namor touched Vampirella's arm. She followed his gaze. She saw the blood and the steam. She moved behind him, so that she and Namor's bodies met. They felt each others' pulses spike. They shared a look of love, a look which murdered loneliness, forever.

Namor flew at the monster, dodging its lumbering limbs with ease. He landed a punch to the monster's stomach that produced the desired breathlessness. He then flew up to the open maw to hold it for Vampirella. She flew low along the floor. Her mouth sucked in as much of the spilled blood as her cheeks allowed. This she brought to the monsters mouth, spitting it down its throat.

A monster croaked, chocking. A sizzling sound faded in. A splattering of liquefied intestines bubbled up and over its trembling lips. Its shape softened. It was softly bent and slumped. The combative limbs it raised drooped, until they splattered on the floor. Its eyes melted last. Floating in the puddle it made, still looking hate on all life.

The pope stood woodenly. Even as his feet soaked in the rot that was once his god, he was unbent. He looked to Vampirella and Namor. His hate, though, did not deter them in the slightest.

She charged at him, all nails and wings. He charged at him with musclebulge and the cross, now inverted. He impaled the pope with it, his legs kicking out at either side. He screamed. With a swift slice, she removed his head. The sound trailed off. The legs rested.

The pope's blood flowed with force. Every gold piece the sanctum bore was flecked at least with red. There was no glaring light reflected from anywhere. All was darker, a relief, a sanctification.

Vampirella and Namor drew close. Their lips met and sealed. Their arms held one another. Their legs held one another. Their wings unfurled. They loved each other on every surface. They loved each other on the floor. They loved each other on the walls. They loved each other on the ceiling. He, the King of the Deep, donated what she, the Queen of the Night accepted—the seed of something other, dark and earthly, and not of the cross.


End file.
